You have been sent on a highly classified mission to retrieve stolen technology known to be located at Grazorak City. Grazorak City is a the greatest luxury resort in its quadrant. Owned by the Tellerite Duft Grazorak, it is a playground for the wealthiest and most successful people in the Galaxy. But what evils hide just below the surface?

Notes:

Authors’s first offering
Extremely open-ended. Scenario can run in as little as ten minutes or as much as three hours, depending on player decisions and dialogue
Story and roleplay based, single-player
Although combat is likely, this scenario may be completed without combat.
All maps are custom

Greetings, this is Captain Allen of the Federation star ship Andromeda here again to continue my mission to bring technical speaking to every star ship Captain in the galaxy. Last week we saw the UGC Foundry tools really only allow a Text field for the dialog of the NPC or Bridge Officer pictured and allows only a simple sentence (possibly 5 words?) for the Captain to respond, and I gave an example of using Impulse Engines as part of technobabble dialog for a simple introduction to a mission. This week we will delve more deeply into dialog relating to technology and help bridge the gap between a mission hook or complication and making the player feel like they are a part of solving it and not simply reading it.continue reading…

We do want player made missions to have rewards and are working on a way for them to “earn” the ability to give out rewards based on some criteria.

For example – to qualify for having a reward, it must be completed x number of times and have an average time to complete over x minutes. We can also scale rewards based on complexity of the mission and time for completion on top of that. In addition, placing some pre-made encounters guarantees that they will have standard loot drop rewards as well… so in essence, we expect that well made missions that players have approved will grant mission rewards that are worthy.

There is a lot riding on the rating system and how player made missions are policed by the community. We will be adding in features to flag content that could be considered exploitative or innappropriate and have mechanisms in place to ensure that players can’t “game” the system in any way.

But don’t expect to be able to place 100 goodie crates in a closet and call that a mission 😛 – its not going to happen.

Q: Will it be possible to modify output text based upon character level, or class? In other words, can I somehow grab variables in a script and alter my output text so that, say, science officers see something different from tacs, or VAs from CMDRs?

A: This feature is not currently implemented, although we will definitely add it to our dialog tree wishlist.

Q: Will we have some kind of test or private environment to work on/debug our missions prior to making them public, even if someone searches by our name or whatever? I’d like to be able to run through my missions and make sure they’re OK before anyone can play them, and I’m also thinking about a “weekly” sort of series to space things out.

A: This was a top priority in the design. We wanted to make playtesting your mission as easy as clicking the ‘Play’ button in the editor, so you can make sure everything works.

Q: Can we do the cool, big drop-down titles like the Breen missions have?

A: I profess ignorance as to how that works, so that’s probably a No. But I’ll ask around and see if that will fit on the wishlist somewhere.

As far as “shipping it when it’s done”, even our in-house tools don’t allow us make any mission that we can dream up, so expect at launch to write your missions around the capabilities of the tool. Like the game itself, the UGC system will get better as result of the involvement of the community, and that improvement will accelerate once the community can actually use the tool.

Greetings to all… I’m G. B. Jackson, aka Captain Quirk. This is my introductory posting to Starbase UGC. It is my intention to be among UGC authors who intend to tell stories that are worthy of the name Star Trek. As such, I have some thoughts as to what STO’s UGC should be… At least in terms of how I will approach my storytelling process.

You might be asking yourself, “Who does this guy think he is to think he can judge what is or is not ‘worthy of the name Star Trek?'” It’s a fair question. I have, like many of us, grown up with Star Trek, having watched every single episode of every series, and every movie to bear the name. And while each incarnation of Gene Roddenberry’s creation has touched us all in different ways with different personal meanings, there lies at the heart of all things Trek certain undeniable tangible defining principles that solidify them as unquestionable parts of a whole. One in particular is the exploration of the human condition. Whether its exploring strange new worlds on a Starship, or defending a strategic sector on a space station, we are shown an ensemble of characters from a wide variety of species, races and creeds united under one goal. So whether it’s TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY or ENT we’re watching, principles like this are at the core. So I believe that any of us, knowing what Star Trek is about, are qualified to judge whether any unofficial endeavor to write stories that would carry the name are worthy of it.

So it is not an exersise in elitism, but rather an application of common sense.

Now clearly, the tools Cryptic will put in the hands of the community for the development of UGC content will lend themselves to the creation of as much nonsense missions as it will to the creation of missions that can be deemed to be worthy of the name Star Trek. This is not a treatise on the condemnation of the former or the exaultation of the latter. It is a declaration of my intent as one who would seek to achieve the latter. Therefore, when I speak of what I think that UGC should be, I am speaking of how I intend to approach it.

In search of a theme…What lies at the heart of every good Star Trek TV Series episode is the story of each character, and how their threads intertwine throughout the course of the show from start to finish. Unfortunately, at this time, STO does not really give us the means of treating our supporting characters, the Bridge Officers, meaning or purpose beyond the scope of MMO pets. My Vulcan Science Officer who has been with my main character has never been any more or less than what someone else’s first BO. The closest I can get to setting him up as my First Officer is intentionally keeping the rest of my BOs one rank degree behind him. So how will I be able to explore meaningful character backgrounds in my UGC scenarios?

NPCs

The approach I am planning to take is to write my UGC scenarios so that the player is assigned to joint efforts with another ship and crew. It will be the crew of the other ship which I will bring to life by giving them backgrounds and personalities that make them feel “real”. Each episode will bring the player opportunities to interact with this crew on their ship, to go on away missions within them. And to pilot his/her ship along side this other crew’s ship.

Because this ship and her crew will be entirely my own creation, and the fate of its crew in my hands, I will do things according to how I feel the story I am trying to tell requires. Some of these characters will come and go. Some will leave. Some will die. I will never let on what will happen. Except to say, humanity will happen. And the players will be in the middle of it…

Rather than go on with a long, drawn-out post, I’d like you to comment on this approach I plan to take. If you’ve got ideas as to what might be done, I’m interested. If you’ve got questions, I’ll answer.

This will be my personal approach to UGC storytelling. I think that STO’s UGC should be about telling a story of humanity in the Star Trek universe. And my scenarios will do exactly that. It is my hope that many aspiring UGC authors will tell stories worthy of Star Trek, and the more creative they can be in the delivery, the better I feel those stories will be. So I am not trying to say that everyone should adopt my approach. I’m saying that they should adopt an approach and try to stick with it for consistency.

As I get more excited about the UGC expansion for STO, I keep taking a few moments to reflect on the history of Star Trek fans. I think it’s fair to say that we have always been a pretty obsessive and militant fanbase, and we’ve gone to extraordinary measures to contribute to the lore through fan fictions, RPGs, artwork, etc.

If you think about it, Star Trek owes almost everything to the fans. We lobbied to get a third season of TOS with a letter-writing campaign. Our passion to watch and rewatch reruns led to the Animated Series in the early 70s. In another fan campaign, we got NASA to name the first space shuttle “Enterprise.” That is pretty insane when you consider that they originally wanted to dub it the “Constitution” to celebrate the Bicentennial.

Throughout Star Trek‘s 45-year journey, fans have been writing and circulating their own stories, designing and building their own models, and keeping the universe alive in the minds of millions. Although we’ve often been told that our unique creations are not canon, it doesn’t mean that our devotions and disorders have been meaningless. Rather we’ve pushed the franchise along at warp speed. In some ways, we are and shall always be Star Trek.

Here’s hoping that UGC artists show the same passion, sophistication, and OCD spurts of creativity that have defined Trekkers for decades. In the face of social stigma and shouts of “Get a Life!” we have always persevered, expanding the lore and mythos, while taking the franchise to new heights.

User Generated Content has not even been launched yet but a lot of folks are already looking forward to its debut. So with that in mind, I thought I would get a jump on things and get the ball rolling with a few suggestions. Those of us who have seen the different ways that user generated content has been implemented in other games can attest that while some of it can be down right awesome, some can be… Well not so awesome. Admittedly not everyone is going to be on the same level when it comes to creating content for their favorite game. Yet there are some things we can do as amateur content creators that can go a long way to helping not only ourselves but others as well.

Here is my suggestion, we help create a set of lose standards to help guide folks in their journey to create content for STO. These can be like what maps to draw from. STO is already loosely based on some maps previously published in other works so that would be a good place to start. Perhaps a list of good background resource material such as particular published books or even agreed upon websites like Memory Alpha. Something else that I think might help would be naming conventions for titles and files. Of course it could not be anything that might stifle creativity but something that new creators can look at to see not only where to start but a good way to get their work recognized with out it being confusing to find.

I realize this might be presumptuous and just a tad early and maybe not everyone agrees and I respect that. Hopefully we can look forward to a long and happy affair with the UGC, standards or no.